


shadows under our eyes

by monyaka



Series: Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts [4]
Category: Royal Blood (Visual Novel)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Insomnia, Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:21:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27916672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monyaka/pseuds/monyaka
Summary: they say the body always remembers even if your mind cannot. and chloe doesn't know what it's remembering, but sometimes, she can get a glimpse of it. sometimes, she can get a glimpse of him.-set after royal blood's bad ending.
Relationships: Chloe Taylor/Andrew Russell, Chloe Taylor/Jay Russell, Chloe Taylor/Lars Hegner, Chloe Taylor/Theo Russell
Series: Maybe Interactive 2020 December Prompts [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2035726
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	shadows under our eyes

**Author's Note:**

> please read the tags! this isn't a happy entry in this series, unfortunately. this is set after royal blood's bad ending, so there will be spoilers ahead. though all the guys are tagged as ship, there are only references to theo, jay, and lars, and i focused mainly on andrew. im sorry his route is just the only one i've actually finished

_ chloe? please, stop. _

the alarm clock goes off, and chloe screams her throat raw. for a moment, she thinks she should be somewhere else. a castle. the place she rented from the landlady. but instead, she’s at violet’s place. she sinks deep into the covers and listens for any sound. activity, the thrum of people living and working, even just violet’s footsteps coming to check on her.

but violet’s footsteps don’t come, and chloe knows why. she’s given up on chloe, hasn’t she? it would be easy to do so, she reasons, considering that all the art graduate does is waste away in her bed and drink on the rooftop of her favourite building. she always ends up finding more alcohol, despite violet’s efforts to hide any she has in the house. come to think of it, she keeps complaining that chloe’s like a dog who can sniff it out.

a dog. a dog. why does that sound familiar?

it’s funny, because everything feels familiar. she’d seen a lavish castle on tv and had emptied her stomach on violet’s carpet. “i’ll clean it up,” she’d insisted woozily, and her best friend had looked at her like she doesn’t even know her. 

it’s fine, chloe thinks, because she’s not sure she knows herself anymore. her throat is raw all the time, her eyes permanently bloodshot. and she can’t help but feel a grief she can’t name. because something is  _ wrong _ with her. something is wrong with her life. she can’t remember, she  _ can’t _ remember what it is, but she’s made a mistake. she’s supposed to be happier than this. why isn’t she?

because when she does, she can feel a shadow of something reaching to claw at her throat, and she’s not sure if she wants to look it in the eyes and remember him.

_ him _ . someone who’s got shadows under his eyes just like hers, someone who smells like oil paints and has a mischievous look about him. someone she’s supposed to remember. maybe that’s why she can’t paint anymore. the sight of a canvas, a whiff of paint in the air — it fills her with this powerful longing, a desperate mourning for something she doesn’t know she’s lost. 

violet had taken her to the art museum she likes to go to, and she’d seen one of her favourite paintings, one by warden. and she’d said, “warden is an anagram for andrew. or, um, it could be. wouldn’t it be a strange coincidence?”

because even if she’s forgotten, the memories linger like shadows in her body. the people she once loved live inside her, in everything she does, and she drinks them away so their ghosts don’t come to haunt her. at night, she cries, and the part of her that remembers screams out to him, desperate for him to make her laugh or whisper words of encouragement. she doesn’t know who he is, can’t remember his face or his smile or his gentle touches. but she still craves it. she still craves him.

_ i’ll soon forget, _ she tells herself.  _ it’s a nightmare, and i’ll forget it all. _

since her mom’s died, the world has been a haze anyway. it should be easy to forget nightmares like this. she’d been the last one at mother’s funeral, and there’s nothing waiting for her in the mail every day. (why would there be?) even if she had the money for a canvas, she doubts she can paint anything. and though she’s always been talented at sleeping soundly, there are dark shadows under her eyes. chloe hasn’t been sleeping, but she hasn’t been awake either. the world seems to blur at the edges, and maybe that’s the alcohol talking, but she suspects it would be the same if she were sober. she’s not inclined to test that theory, though. 

_ testing theories.  _ there’s something awful about that to her, something that instinctively makes her raise her hand to her lips. it escapes her the moment it comes to her, though. that’s what happens when you’re exhausted. you drink, and you forget, and you stay numb and in agony.

exhaustion overwhelms her for a brief moment, but when she closes her eyes, she sees darkness, the kind of darkness that can swallow you up if you’re not careful. her eyes snap open and she sobs until she loses her voice. that’s why she can’t sleep, isn’t it? because the shadows remind her of the darkest part of herself. 

she takes out the torn photo of her mother and stares at the empty space. it’s ripped to pieces, never able to be whole again. just like her. she reaches for the bottle of tequila she’d brought up to the rooftop and takes a swig of empty air. just like her, the bottle is empty. she sets it down, or she tries to — but her eyes follow the descent of the bottle through the empty air, stares as it crashes into the sidewalk a lifetime below her.  _ what would it be like, _ she wonders,  _ to fall so far? _

the night wind cools her flushed face, locks of her hair flying out of place. she feels a ghost on her skin, the tender touch of a man’s thumb across her cheek. it’s so peaceful here, so somber, and she thinks she might like to paint the scene. but she knows there’s no joy in painting, not anymore. painting is healing, and she’s missed her chance entirely for something like that. no, instead she draws roses on her arm in black ink, and she colours it in blood-red and thinks about unrequited love and how it can make flowers bloom upon your skin.

_ overturning the life you lived and accepting a new way of living can be painful. it could be physical pain… or… emotional pain. _

she grips the roof’s edge under her ghost-white hands, but it does nothing to ground her. she’s too dizzy for that, too drunk. and it strikes her that maybe she remembers it better when she’s drunk, that maybe if she drinks enough it’ll all come back. but that’s ridiculous. there’s no bringing it back. not that warmth. not that love.

she leans a bit forward. a bit more. she’s entranced by the night sky that seems to span the entire expanse of the world. if there’s something she’s missing, can’t she find it there? if she could remember his face, could she make a constellation of him in the stars? a drunken hand stretches out to try and touch it, the city sky with its light pollution. as if he’d be just beyond the boundary of her sight. as if he’d be just close enough to touch. as if he’d be at the bottom of the building, ready to catch her. there’s a certain joy in falling, she thinks, when you know there’s someone there to catch you. and though she knows there’s no one waiting there for her, that there will never be someone there for her, she still feels that life, that love, as the wind whips through her hair. the ground hurtles closer and closer. but she doesn’t feel fear. 

after all, she’s had this dream before.


End file.
